The Beach Bum

A more adult version of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, The Beach Bum is a casual bohemian fuck-off to social conventions and Miami glamor, set in a stoner’s euphoria, without the need for genre-specific plots or realistic basics. Though the humour is occasionally so infantile that it’s no longer funny, and there is less ambition for artistic reflection than we are used to with Korine, there is a non-stop good mood and some definitely iconic details, so I predict that, just like good wine, this movie might get better with age. For me, the most iconic scene is the stoned cruise from Key West to Miami on a shoddy, funnily branded motorboat! (08/04/2019)

Lighter and funnier than Spring Breakers, The Beach Bum is a totally free and liberating film in which nothing much happens (to anyone) and practically the only “plot” development, in the final third of the film, consists in the always absent-minded Matthew McConaughey starting to wear women’s clothing and barking (which comes across as entirely normal, given the temperament of most of the characters and large number of bizarre situations). The Beach Bum is the perfect mental enema and the only Febiofest film after which I felt truly relaxed. 85% (29/03/2019)

A group of decent actors smoked four hundred pounds of grass provided by Snoop Dogg and snorted dozens of pounds of cocaine provided by Zac Efron. The result is a totally crazy trip, and when you find up who made it, you probably won’t be all that surprised. (22/03/2020)

I was expecting a bigger ride and trip, but still a cool movie full of familiar faces, weed and half naked women. Matthew McConaughey is completely natural in his role and occasionally slips in a fine line, but I was expecting a lot more humor and fun. Interesting, unconventional with a spiritual twist, but once was enough. 60%. (23/07/2019)

Seen through the lens of Harmony Korine, the world of Floridian potheads has an element of captivating opulence and ridiculous absurdity. As in Spring Breakers, and in all of his previous films, the director presents to us deviant figures and their worlds, which teeter on the edge of reality and the imaginations of the protagonists. Therefore, The Beach Bum contains both surreal sequences and the occasional collision with reality, just as the gleaming aesthetics of music videos get a soiled and shabby tinge of worn-out rags and plain, wrinkled faces. At first glance, particularly after the formally aggressive Spring Breakers, the unexpected stylistic conventionality of Korine's new work is surprising, blunted by the repeat engagement of the elsewhere ostentatiously formalistic Benoît Debie. However, his formal conservatism gives greater force to the natural opulence and exaggerated external stylisation of the characters. After all, it is so varied and excessive that it actually resembles George Miller's post-apocalyptic vision of the last two Mad Max films. Except this time, it is not a post-civilisationvision that unfolds before our eyes, but rather the image of the deranged reality of a Floridian The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday. (04/05/2019)

To harass Korine's The Beach Bum with the fact that, unlike Spring Breakers, it lacks an edge, is actually a misunderstanding of the entire film, because it is nothing but that edge. Set in a similar milieu, SB does counter the mundane boredom of flustered teenage students with the mephistophelean and surreal world of Florida resorts and their gangs, though it does so to demonstrate a subconscious reluctance to peek behind the curtain of seemingly endless parties of beautiful young people. Whereas in The Beach Bum we are now only behind that curtain, without any elaboration of the positions or backgrounds of anyone involved. Contentedly watching these unbroken hash philosophers for an hour and a half is actually a separate act of resistance against most contemporary values based on responsibility and conscientiousness. Moondog's position as an untouchable egotistical eccentric who hasn't walked the straight and narrow for the last twenty years offers one version of complete personal freedom. And it’s not so much based on drugs and booze, but on complete symbiosis with one's surroundings, of which all those unhealthy ingredients are simply an inherent part. That Moondog is simply "just" a part of his environment is portrayed again by Korine with his fluid narration (plus, we don't usually find ourselves in a new scene at the beginning, but sort of drop into it when it’s already in progress) and low-depth-of-field camera randomly floating at the protagonist's pace, into which characters occasionally fall and occasionally hide out of sight of (well, Debie). Perhaps this time the sympathy for the protagonist didn’t need to be so bluntly stated, and the music, which half the time sounds like Tom the cat sneaking into the fridge to get a piece of ham, also ran into a wall of incomprehension for me. (31/07/2019)

The sleazy-looking and acting Matthew McConaughey became dangerously comfortable with the role of the poetic genius Moondog. If there were more comedic situations to amuse oneself with here, I could imagine coming back to this dull film sometime. In this way, I'm left with nothing else but to at least chuckle inwardly at the funny scene from the dolphin-swimming trip with sharks, which made the movie worth seeing. (60%) (29/08/2021)